One of my most popular posts on this blog is the one about living with someone who owns their own house, because it’s hard to live in someone else’s space and feel any ownership over it. So my job, once I officially moved in, was to try to make the place feel more like my home. And the best way I knew how to do that was by re-decorating.
The very first thing I wanted to change was the bedroom. Because here’s what it looked like when I moved in:
Before and after.
The first time he walked into the finished bathroom, Mike exclaimed, “look at this bathroom for adults!” My response, and my thoughts every time I’m in it, was, “this feels like a bathroom our parents should be using.” It feels so grown-up and fancy. I can’t believe it’s ours!
My only issue is… since we made the choice to go with oil-rubbed bronze hardware (how amazing does it look in there!?) I found out that it’s not that easy to change out shower hardware. It’s actually such a process that we chose not to do it. So the shower hardware remains silver, while everything else is that gorgeous bronze.
Other than the mis-matched hardware, and the fact that two of the side mirrors for the medicine cabinets arrived broken, I’m head-over-heals in the love with this bathroom remodel…
It’s embarrassing to admit this, but so much of my brain power has been devoted to sheer window treatments this week. I eat sleep and breath sheer window treatment ideas — okay, not actually so much sleeping since the thought of sheer window treatments are keeping me awake. No seriously, I lie in bed thinking about sheer fucking window treatments.
Mike’s living room is dark. Although it has three big windows, they only get light for a couple hours in the morning. So by noon, I find myself wanting to turn on the overhead lights sometimes, which is a total waste of energy. The poor lighting situation wasn’t aided by the dark blue curtains and heavy linen sheers that his previous designer hung. It felt like a cave.
The solution was obviously going to be switching out those heavy curtains for sheers. And OH WHAT A DIFFERENCE A SHEER MAKES:
Ignore the fact that there’s only ONE panel on the big window… the second one is on it’s way.
The Bed Bath & Beyond at the Beverly Center is going out business (say THAT three times fast) and they’re having a massive sale. My mother (who wonderfully flew into town to help me with the move-in remodel) braved the madness, and somehow managed to find exactly the right number of the perfect neutral-colored sheers in all the right lengths.
I love this little corner of the house so much.
Before my mom found the perfect sheers, I purchased this macrame wall hanging from Urban Outfitters…
The dust has settled on the move-in renovation, and shall be swept away soon… until round two. Yes, the break in the reno is only temporary because, although the back of the house has been torn up and put back together, it can’t be totally finished right now.
Wherever you are, vanity, I hope someone’s taking care of you and lovingly using you to wash their body parts.
Did you know that it’s possible for a shipping company to completely lose a double sink vanity. A big one. Or, as the Home Depot gal put it, when Mike explained the situation: “How’d they lose something that’s big!? That’s 300 pounds!… Some people would kill to be able to lose 300 pounds that easily.”
Did you also know that, when you order your closet doors from Home Depot, you should probably specify where you want them delivered. And if you don’t, they will be delivered to the Home Depot from whence they were ordered. And when you don’t have a truck to transport them because you’re both writers who live in LA and why-in-the-hell would we drive trucks, that you’ll be sans closet doors for a while?
And did you know that custom closets can take up to a month to be installed once their ordered?
Did you ever think about the fact that you’d have to order special extra long washer and dryer hoses, if your washer and dryer need to be installed in an extra deep closet?
Did you also know that changing the hardware in a shower is not as easy as exchanging a face plate and screwing on a new spout?
We know all these things NOW. We did not know them last week.
So right now there’s just a giant empty space one one side of our room, where our clothes should be…
Things are trucking along at an alarmingly fast rate over in Move-in Renovation Land!
In the last, what?, week our contractor has torn down the bedroom closet and ripped out the back of the laundry closet. Then re-built a new bedroom closet and pushed back the laundry closet wall 7 inches, in order to accommodate a regular size washer and dryer.
Soon that empty laundry closet (that I think looks like a TARDIS when the blue door is shut) will be filled with these babies…
This post is exactly what the title says: A whole lot of transitional double sink bathroom vanities that have cool open spaces. It’s not exciting, but I did the research so, why not share!?
My favorite bathroom from our hotel room in Cartagena, Colombia.
My entire bathroom remodel idea was inspired by our hotel room in Cartagena, Colombia! It had the greatest bathroom of any hotel room stay in my life. And I realized… holy shit, we could TOTALLY steal this look for Mike’s master bathroom — spanish style bathroom with beige tiles, add a double sink bathroom vanity, dark wood, carrera marble counter tops, double mirrors… fucking sexy.
So I was on the hunt for dark wood (preferably Spanish-style) double sink bathroom vanities with open spaces in 70″ or longer widths. Here’s what I found:
Yesterday I got to use the two little words I’ve been dying to say my whole adult life: our contractor. As in “Our contractor is coming by at 10am.” Or “Excuse me, I have to go meet with our contractor right now. air kiss air kiss Tootles!”
Here’s the thing about Mike’s place… it’s awesome, it’s in a great neighborhood, it’s got a lot of living space, with a lovely backyard. But it also has limited closet space and, for some reason, one tiny pedestal sink in the master bathroom. Which is perfect when you’re a bachelor living alone, it’s not-so-much all perfect when you’re a couple.
In the days following Mike asking me to move in, I woke up every morning eying his bedroom closet… That little fucker… I’m not sure why it was done this way, but the closet it set back in the room which makes the square footage a hell of a lot smaller than if they had made it flush with the wall. Being my mother’s daughter (my mother Lala, aka. Laura “we’ll just take down this wall” Tharpe), I started having visions of “bumping out” the closet to make it a much larger semi-walk-in.
There is a Megan-sized gap between the end of the closet to the bedroom wall!
And, while I LOVE that Mike and I keep similar schedules — waking up at the same time and going to bed at the same time — it becomes quite the pain in the ass when we’re both fighting for limited mirror and sink space. So, of course, my inner-wanna-be-interior designer thinks “we can install double sinks! And while we’re at it install new hardware. Maybe add another outlet?”
This is my “why is there only one tiny pedestal sink in the big master bathroom?” face.
Then my inner-Vulcan says, “but it’s perfectly good bathroom and it doesn’t NEED all those changes.” “I know. I know. I just… it’s perfectly good but it could be better.” “Calm down. None of this is happening anyway. You’re in fantasy re-decorating land again.”
And yet… it’s ALL happening!
I’ve talked before about how Target is just killing it with their home decor items right now. I recently saw my co-workers’ golden flatware set on her post about her INCREDIBLE Guardians of the Galaxy cake. My reaction: “Wait. Where did you get those golden forks!?” And she was all, “I got these at Target! I snatched ’em up real fast.” She’s a brilliant woman, that Catherine.
So I thought I’d take another peep at Target’s home goods, and holy shit… it’s I knew they were killing it, but I had no idea how brutally they’re slaughtering the field of gold home decor accents…
Over on Offbeat Home, I showed off some of my minimalist bedroom inspiration from a real estate listing. One of my wonderful Homies asked to know more about my actual bedroom. So here it is (keep in mind that it’s still a work in progress)…
Can you see the coffee table in this photo? Just barely right? Yeah, me too. Constantly.
That barely visible coffee table situation is actually the Top Stage Clear Acrylic Nesting Lucite Side Table Set arranged in a semi-circle, on this too-small-but-passable jute rug.
Both of these — because of their dinky-ness and their ability to completely disappear from my vision enough for me to forget they’re there and then continuously get scared by the shiny appearance of a translucent table at my feet — are going to be just temporary. I’m eventually going to have to get a bigger rug, and then I’m thinking the translucent tables are DEFINITELY going to look too small for the space.
But… as the days go by, I’m growing quite fond of my weird coffee table situation — shiny table-induced heart jumps aside
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